Garmin Fenix 5 Opinions

[Trevor]

After wearing it for a week here are some initial take aways.
The one thing I still really, really do not like about the watch is that I can not find a decent face that I really like. They all seem so cheap (to put it blunt). For a $650 watch, it looks really cheap.

I have used it twice while riding. I set up the screens to show just a few basic things. Time duration, distance, speed. Next screen is HR, 10s Power, and NP. Final screen in big letters is time of day. I just set it up real quick so I didn't go crazy. The first time was outside so I have no clue what the heck it was recording, I just paired it to my heart rate monitor and Stages and hit start. When I got home I hit stop, save, and then it started spitting a bunch of stuff out at me, which was pretty cool. Gave me a new FTP (which for this time of year was right where I thought it was, so thats a good sign), how many days I need to rest, aerobic and anaerobic thingers and something else.

Second ride was on the trainer where I wanted to see what was actually going on. Everything paired nicely to begin with, but at times my 10s power displayed " - - " for 3-5 seconds then popped back up. I'm not sure if I was losing signal or what. At the end of the ride I stopped, saved, and all the data shot back out at me. It once again said I had a new FTP (3 watts lower than the day before) and said "Accept or Decline" again. This time said to take 38 hrs off.

The GarminConnect app is meh, but I have not messed around with it all that much. I still upload to Golden Cheetah. I see in the connectIQ store you can get a TrainingPeaks app. Maybe it's time I switch over to TrainingPeaks, but I do like Golden Cheetah.

I still need to dive into it more, but I really hope that it isn't losing connectivity to my power meter every 2-3 minutes. Other than watch faces being awful, that is my biggest concern. Anybody have any experience with losing connectivity? Any good watch faces to recommend?

[kytyree]

I tried connecting my Fenix 5 to read my KICKR and it cut in and out so often it drove me crazy with the alerts. I've read about one of the channels being better than the other for the Fenix 5 between Bluetooth and ANT+ IIRC but getting power data on it isn't that important to me so I just disconnected it from both my power meters. I record HR on it when I ride because I want to see what the "training" part of the watch will come up with. But I record my power data with an ELEMNT Bolt which I really like as a cycling computer.

For watch faces I use one of the simple ones it came with, changed the data to show 4 basic things I care about and adjusted the color. But overall a very basic watch face, with hands and everything, I don't like or feel like I need some of the downloaded faces that display a bunch of information and have graphs plotting etc.